NSLIJHS/Hosftra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine Program
Long Island Jewish Medical Center 270-05 76th Avenue New Hyde Park, NY 11040 Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Residency Program Residency Program Director: Michael Esposito, MD Number of Residents (total): 16 Number of Residents (annually): 4 Program sponsors H1/J1 visas (H1 visas require passing Step 3 before starting residency) EDUCATION: This program has evolved significantly since 2004. It is the child of the combination of two primary care facilities that merged in 2004: the North Shore University Hospital (then affiliated to NYU) and the Long Island Jewish Medical Center (then affiliated to Albert Einstein College of Medicine) and became the NS-LIJ Health System. The Hospital formalized its partnership with Hofstra Medical School in 2008 and, starting from 2011, the residency will be a University program rather than a community based-hospital affiliated one. With ~90,000 surgical specimens a year, this program offers a truly wide variety of cases in all surgical pathology specialties. The Health System covers a very big and demographically diverse area, so there is very good quality of specimens. There are divisions for each subspecialty, so the volume gets distributed evenly and it remains appropriate and learning-friendly. We have daily conferences that cover both AP and CP topics so, even if your AP service rotation is very specific, you still manage to get exposed to a variety of other AP and CP topics. Each hospital has their own strong points and preponderance of specimens (i.e. LIJ has a Children’s hospital while there is no peds at NS, NS has more complicated GI/Head and Neck specimens than LIJ) so you spend time at both places to make sure you get proper exposure. When you first join, you are not expected to totally hit the floor running. PGY1’s spend the month of July (2 weeks at each hospital) doing an introductory month to AP; they shadow the PA’s, get familiar with how the system works, oversee sign outs with the faculty and get familiar with grossing techniques and the dictation system. We have 5 full time PA’s at each facility and I can tell you this much: After your introductory month, you will only gross large specimens. Here comes the interesting part: the faculty members for both hospitals (>40 pathologists) work together at a third facility. The Hospitals are 2 miles away from each other and the offices are located in between. Here, subspecialty groups (GI, GU, Breast, Renal, Heme, Soft Tissue, Head and Neck, Derm, Gyn, Peds, Thorax, Neuro), each with their own sign-out area and multihead scopes, take care of the daily cases. There is a case review conference everyday at 11am where all disciplines get together and discuss challenging cases. This is a great teaching opportunity for residents to be aware of frequent issues on all surgical path specialties. Still, there are attendings at each hospital every day, covering frozens and overseeing the grossing room, so you are never unsupervised and immediate help is a phone call away. ENVIRONMENT Nine out of 10 attendings are truly interested in teaching and welcome mentoring the residents. Their door is always open, both figuratively and literally. Our program director is fully committed to resident development and is very receptive to our feedback. The program is particularly supportive of academic production; getting involved with research project of all complexities, from case reports to bench research is easy and encouraged. Each resident has an annual allowance for education, but the program will pay for all expenses if you are presenting (either poster or podium) at a conference, even after you’ve exhausted your allowance. The program is very flexible in terms of elective time and rotations elsewhere. I personally did an outside elective rotation on my second year, in the area for which I had fellowship interest, and no struggle at all was necessary. Overall, it is a very encouraging environment, with state of the art facilities and endless resources. LIFESTYLE: It’s NEW YORK! No matter what your interests are, you will find outstanding quality of it here. Nuff’ said. One thing I love about living in this area is that is comfortably close to the city (~30 min. drive, ~45 min by public transportation) so that you can go any time you please, and yet far enough to be peaceful, quiet, open and inexpensive (by comparison). I have never seen a resident salary higher than at NS-LIJ (PGY1 for 2010 is $59.5k). There is a limited amount of subsidized (50% of rent cost) housing for about half of the residents. The residents all get along well at work, we get together occasionally for social outings as a group. The program is 80% IMG’s right now (all of outstanding academic quality) since it used to fill before the match. I predict this to change over the next couple of years, since it is policy now to fill through the Match, and the residency becoming a University program. DAILY SCHEDULE: We start the day at 8 am for conference (Mon: Unknown slides; Tue: board review; Wed: CP conference; Thu: Cytology; Fri: CP conference). Time for conferences is protected and you are relieved of in-service duties for that time. On AP, you gross 2 days a week and the rest is dedicated to sign-outs. You have no frozen section duties while on a surgical pathology rotation. You will have 2 months of frozen section rotation by itself where your only responsibility will be to cover frozens 9am-5pm. There is a noon conference (Journal club, faculty lectures and resident presentations) everyday. Some other conferences are mandatory for either CP (on call conference) of AP (autopsy/gross conference) and are scattered throughout the week. Many of these conferences are teleconferenced to avoid intense commuting After the conference you go back to your service duties. The average AP day ends by 5 or 6 pm. CP days may be shorter but some rotations (chemistry, blood bank) are busy and have relatively longer days (usually ending by 6 or 7). The hours are reasonable and flexible and you have plenty of time to socialize and foment interests outside medicine. The are 5 different types of calls 1. AP weekday = Frozens after 5pm 2. AP weekend = Grossing on Saturdays (a PA comes as well!) 3. Weekend autopsies 4. CP weekday = CP call after 5pm (Mon-Thur) 5. CP weekend = CP call after 5pm (Fri-Sun) We take an average of 4 of each calls a year. Pros: Committed to teaching. Residents are not part of the work force. Teaching time is protected. State of the art technology. Book funds. Conference fund. Board review fund. Great support system for resident and family. Friendly resident relationships; helping each other Lots of fellowships, Really great faculty and resident support, $1500 book fund/year, one conference paid for / year, if presenting, friendly and supportive residents, very nice place to live with a low cost of living, many residents purchase a house, schedule of rotations is flexible enough to focus on particular interests, lots of research and teaching opportunities Cons: Average work hours on surgical path? Are you allowed to do external rotations? Yes. Do you feel you have: Adequate preview time? Yes Adequate support staff (P.A.’s, secretarial, etc.)? Yes Adequate AP Teaching? Yes. Adequate CP Teaching? Yes. Are Fellowship Programs Offered? Please list: Surgical path; GI; GU; Neurorpath; hemopath; cytopath CAP Standardized Fellowship Application Accepted? No Cytopathology Fellowship Hematopathology Fellowship Category:Nuclear Medicine